Entries in Stalker
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Comstock/Thinkstock(MARIETTA, Ga.) -- It was clearly going to be a grueling day of testimony for Nick Smith as he was about to be cross-examined by the man accused of murdering his mother and stabbing him 18 times when he was only 5 years old.

Smith began crying shortly after taking the stand in Marietta, Ga., and was just spelling his name.

Smith, now 22, was testifying in the murder trial of Waseem Daker, who was acting as his own attorney.

Daker spent 10 years in prison for stalking Loretta Spencer Blatz, who was roommates with Nick Smith and his mother, Karmen Smith.

Shortly before Daker went to prison in 1995, Karmen Smith was strangled and Nick Smith was savagely attacked when he came home from school.

Smith recounted the assault in court Tuesday for prosecutors and then was cross-examined by Daker. His testimony, he noted to prosecutors, came on what would have been his mother's birthday.

"I got home from school and my mom's car was still in the driveway so I thought she was home," Smith said through tears. "And I went downstairs and she wasn't there."

He said he went to upstairs to play with a friend, but returned again looking for his mother, but saw a man there instead.

"From what I could tell it was a man, but it was really dark and I just assumed that it was someone that I knew....The person in the room grabbed me and started stabbing me a bunch and I tried to yell and he covered my mouth and then he kept stabbing me," Smith said.

The stabbings, he said, "felt like I was getting punched."

Smith said he remembered a gloved hand over his mouth. He said his assailant was also wearing a black mask of some sort that covered his face. He said because of the mask he wasn't able to get a good look at the man who attacked him.

"I have stab wounds all over my chest and a stab wound in my hand," he testified and lifted his shirt to show the jury the 17 stab wounds on his chest and one to his hand.

When Daker took over the questioning, he asked Smith if he had heard the recordings of the statements he gave right after the attack. Smith responded that he wouldn't want to, and said he doesn't remember telling the detectives at the time that he could see his attacker's eyes, which he said were blue.

"I was in the hospital and had gotten stabbed repeatedly by you, so I don't think that's a very good time to be asking a 5-year-old questions like that," Smith responded.

Daker had long been a suspect in Karmen Smith's murder, but it wasn't until 2009 that hairs found on Karmen Smith's body matched Daker's DNA.

It was the second day of dramatic testimony in the trial. Last Friday, Blatz took the stand and was clearly rattled having to be grilled by the man imprisoned for stalking her relentlessly and accused of murdering her roommate.

After several hours of questioning, Blatz fought back against Daker when he asked the judge to label her testimony during his questioning as "inappropriate."

"Well, you know, it's really inappropriate that you stalk me and harass me, and you're sitting here asking me questions, and I have to come back with you and answer your questions, that's hard for me," she said, breaking down and sobbing.

"I didn't realize this was going to turn into murder. My God, I mean, if I would have known I would have taken notes," she told the court.

Daker was imprisoned for stalking Blatz after the two met on a paintball team in 1995. He began calling her at all hours, showing up unexpectedly at her home and refusing to leave, and even breaking into her home.

Comstock/Thinkstock(MARIETTA, Ga.) -- A 17-year-old murder case has brought a convicted stalker face-to-face in a Georgia courtroom with the woman he harassed. He is now on trial, accused of killing her roommate as an act of revenge for reporting him to police.

Waseem Daker spent nearly 10 years in jail for stalking Loretta Spencer Blatz. The two met on a paintball team in 1995, and he reportedly refused to take a hint, calling her at all hours, showing up at her home, refusing to leave, and even breaking into her home.

Daker was convicted in 1996. But before he went to jail, Blatz’s roommate, Karmen Smith, was found strangled to death in the home she and Blatz shared. Smith was a Delta flight attendant, and lived at the home with her five-year-old son. The boy was stabbed multiple times during the attack, but survived.

Police long suspected Daker was responsible for the attack, but they weren’t able to connect Daker to the murder until 2009 -- three years after he was released on the stalking conviction. Police now had the power of DNA tests: they announced that hairs found on Smith’s body put Daker at the scene of her murder.

At court in Marietta, Ga., Daker has dismissed his court-appointed lawyers and is now acting as his own counsel. That’s made for awkward and emotional witness questioning. Loretta Spencer Blatz was grilled on the witness stand by the man she helped put away. She was, at times, overcome with emotion.

In court last Friday, when Daker asked the judge to label her testimony “inappropriate,” Blatz fought back.

“Well, you know, it’s really inappropriate that you stalk me and harass me, and you’re sitting here asking me questions, and I have to come back with you and answer your questions, that’s hard for me!”

“I didn’t realize this was going to turn into murder,” she said. “My God, I mean, if I would have known I would have taken notes.”

Daker has argued in court that he and Blatz were a couple and that he had no reason to come after her roommate and her roommate’s son. He’s pleaded not guilty.

But on Monday, Blatz’s former fiancée testified Daker continued to threaten her and show up unannounced even after she filed a restraining order.

This week, the five-year-old boy who survived the stabbings is expected to testify. Nick Smith, the son of Blatz’s former roommate, is now a grown man in his early 20s.

Goodshoot RF/Thinkstock(GAINESVILLE, Ga.) -- Police are using tweets about a "stalker" to investigate the homicide of a girl who had been missing for a day in North Georgia.

Hannah Truelove, 16, was found dead Friday in a wooded area near the apartment she shared with her mother, one day after she was reported missing, police said.

A resident of the complex discovered the teen's body, which showed signs of trauma, said Sgt. Kiley Sargent, spokesman for the Hall County Sheriff's Office.

An autopsy has been completed but detectives are withholding the cause of death to avoid compromising the investigation, Sargent said.

Hannah tweeted days before her disappearance that she was being stalked.

"I got me an uglya-- stalker," she tweeted Aug. 12.

"So scared right now," she wrote Aug. 18.

"I need to move out of these dang apartments," she wrote Aug. 22, the day before she disappeared.

Sargent said investigators are "looking at different avenues," including whether someone had been stalking Hannah.

"We have to determine what she meant by stalker," Sargent said. "A stalker to a 16-year-old might not be a stalker to what may be Georgia code official. We're trying to determine what she meant by that."

Misty Bedwell / Design Pics/Thinkstock(SEATTLE) -- The judge was booked, the rings were chosen, but the romance was missing.

Seattle authorities have charged a woman with one count of felony stalking after she allegedly made plans to marry a man who had a restraining order against her.

Madaline Desmet, 64, met the unidentified man briefly two years ago at church. She professed her undying love for him in more than 50 love letters and allegedly followed him around, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.

Despite the man’s rebuffing of her advances and getting a restraining order, the single real estate agent allegedly continued to pursue him.

Church officials banned Desmet from their property after she apparently would not leave the man alone, the Seattle Times reported.

Desmet decided in December that the two should tie the knot. She booked a room at a Seattle courthouse and went to Jared the Galleria of Jewelry, where she chose a ring.

The object of Desmet’s affection alerted authorities when the courthouse called him about the wedding. He also received a phone call from the jewelry store asking him to pay for the ring she had selected.

The lovelorn bride was released last week on $50,000 bail and reportedly told police that the man had pursued her online.

Desmet, who has not yet entered a plea, did not respond to a request for comment.